SXSWfm 2018 Showcasing Artist Interview: The Marías

At SXSW 2018, SXSWfm was given the opportunity to interview Los Angeles indie band The Marías. Before their show at Palm Door, Maria, Josh, Edward, Jesse, and Carter discussed how the band formed, musical inspirations, and how they are similar to a smoothie. Read an excerpt of the interview below, and listen to it in full on our Mixcloud.

The Marías Interview Highlights

Is this your first time at SX?

Maria: It is. It’s The Marías first time at SX.

What brought you guys here? Why was it important for you guys to come?

Maria: I think we just kind of wanted to branch out from LA. We haven’t played a lot of shows outside of LA and this is out first tour. And Austin and SX just seem like the perfect stop along our tour, and it’s just great being here with all of the other artists. We are excited to play.

Let’s take it back. How did you guys meet and form?

Carter: I can speak to meeting Maria. It was super serendipitous. I had just moved to Los Angeles from New York and was scrambling to find stuff to do out here. And I had done some teaching and Maria hit me up on reverb.com or something. I had put “I can teach theory! I will teach you theory!” It wasn’t quite that desperate, but it didn’t scare Maria off. It was a couple lessons in and she said “my boyfriend and I are putting a band together, do you know anybody that plays bass?” And I was like “well yeah I do – I could be definitely down.” And then going up and meeting Josh was like it was an instant hook up for me. I remember “Only In My Dreams” was the first song I had heard and we played just the three of us and I was like, oof – I have to be a part of this.

Edward: I actually met Maria when I moved back from New Orleans four years ago at a chance meeting through a mutual friend. And I’ve known Josh since the beginning of high school, and a year after I met Maria, Josh ended up bringing her to one of our friends houses. So that was a coincidence. And then Jesse I’ve known since high school, and I met Carter when we started the band.

Maria: I was playing a solo show at this place called The Kibitz Room next to Canters Deli in Los Angeles. Josh was running sound, and afterwards, he came up and said that he really liked the set the songs and that he wanted to record some of them. So we got together and then the rest is history.

Jesse: Josh and I had been playing in bands since we were ten, so that’s just something we’ve been doing for a long time. And then all of the other stories you just heard happened, and then this band formed about a year and a half ago.

How would you describe your sound to new listeners?

Maria: Somebody had asked us if we could describe our music as a fruit, what would we pick? And we picked passionfruit.

Why?

Maria: Because it’s really tasty. I said guava and passionfruit. But I think [our music] is just really dreamy and psychedelic, but also funky and bringing all of our… influences together to make it something special.

Josh: Taste is definitely the main adjective I would [use to] describe The Marías. It’s a group effort to blend sounds together, rather than “Yeah my tone’s fucking awesome. I don’t know what he’s doing over there, but my tone is great.” There is none of that. It’s really just all of us together, blending our tones.

Carter: We’re a smoothie.

A passionfruit, guava smoothie.

Tune in to hear the full interview with The Marías below. Keep checking our Mixcloud page in the coming weeks as more interviews with 2018 SXSW Showcasing Artists are released. You can listen to SXSWfm 24/7 via our online player.